Takacs-Yang Ghazal

Even my big black truck's windshield wipers made music

while I peered through the smears at the lines on the mountain road

First they played Haydn's "Rider" and we tried to sit still

but applause broke out between movements and the cellist smiled

Next was tricky, Bartok's number five, arching dissonance

and spooky sounds of night mixed in with a melancholy or longing

At intermission, the retired bookseller said he liked the first one—

but the second, too raucous. I thought of the miles the quartet had traveled

Dvorak's piano quintet with the young feisty pianist came last

forty-five minutes that lasted three days or a rapid plunk on the viola

We stood right away, we cheered, we roared and shouted for more

you know how greedy we get

Time

First, Second and Third sit inside each other's skins
Like Russian dolls all varnished up with nowhere to go because they're already here

Whenever I see a butterfly taking a breather on the road
I know it's either warming up its wings or clutching onto that broken stone for a last look

Don't you love the lovemaking that goes on
Between mountains and clouds?

If I am now who I was in that overgrown garden using weed stalks like swords
Whose hand is this writing down the words sixty years later?

Some people need a clock to boil an egg
Me, I just guess and that's why sometimes it's runny and you know the rest

I don’t know what it is

I don’t know what it is

about the vertical line

of the cat’s eye

how the world shrinks

into the frozen still-life

between running and readiness

breath fierce and calm

like sister and brother

What is it I don’t know

the beginning of the world

or was it only this morning

when the wind stopped

clouds forgot their way

the neighbors’ dogs

telling them what for

and the moon not full

Don’t I know this song

no tell-tale repetition

or give-away rhyme

the dance a hesitation

the voice sticks in the flute

eyelashes open and close

their mandolin curtains

rapidly or not at all

the blood sings down

narrow cliff-hanging

paths and trails

making up stories

for anything that moves

bamboo leaf fluttering

spider tight-rope walking

honey bee struggling

Is it what I don’t know

that keeps me here

my fingertips hovering

over the keyboard

my tongue pushing

against the backs

of my patiently waiting

rows of teeth

The Net Thrower

A shadow breaks free
reaches into a dance-move
one arm tracing the arc
of the planets one leg
angled in flight
the other tree deep-
rooted, balanced

Those fine, knotted intersections
held back in their gathered mass
now float aloft wrinkling
and unwrinkling in waves
of geometry folding
and unfolding

To capture the moment
release a chaos of ink
to seek synchronicity
land it on the page
caught up, wriggling
to get free

He knows of the dark mass
under the surface
so he returns to the edge
of day and sea ready
to undo life's energy
huddling in tide pools

Upolu Airport Road Pastoral

I’ve always liked the view despite the clouds

the telephone poles their sagging lines

playing slack key up and down the straight road

the way the northeast winds suggest each turn

of the languid mobius windmill blades

the way the cattle people this scene fretting

into each other’s skins in these wide open spaces

or the egrets who rise up from their cross-eyed

meditations and hold steady their white

brush strokes against the lapis lazuli

the fierce channel where Maui heavily

weighs being an island against being

a mountain anyway what's in a name

that a search engine can't tell me

all I know is one foot in front of the other

and thoughts from forty years ago

looking to land—too much is never enough

we seem to say but now I wonder about

the mess we’re in how separate we feel

just because we can pick up our feet

or take pictures with our iPhone

see that cow over there the one who

attacked the backhoe back when this was just

a field you know before the windmills came

that was a sight the cow charging the digger

defending her turf her patch of earth

she knew something we were slow to get

the winds of change and the roots

of technology running deep right here

in mid-Pacific where the whitecaps

hide the latest splash of a whale from us

Paradise in Fourteen Lines

over the sea and far away

the seven sailing stars above

clouds encircle islands like a lei

and the whales still talk of love

some travelers stay awhile and leave

while some people find a home at last

some give back more than they receive

some say they used to move too fast

paradoxically this land called paradise

looks deceptively slow and easy at first

but life’s on the edge and a word to the wise

before your endless vacation bubbles burst

never turn your back on the ocean

and watch out for the goddess of lava in motion

The Generosity of Numbers

I like the generosity of numbers, the way they fill pages with their flourishes and tails, the way their eyes pop open or close tight, and their strict lines, too, their parallel bars at times, their intersections and severe cross-hatchings, as if they're saying All is precision. All may be counted. And indeed, they tally up the waves and wind, the barometric undulations of our elemental days. How thrilling! How generous indeed. And what if we'd lost them in a funk? Where would we be? Driving who knows how many miles per hour. Enduring how many or how few degrees F or C. We'd never measure up, now, would we? Or take the book, the best line, the quotation we savor with all our might, and now we cannot find the page which numbered would deliver us from the fate of the lost soul at sea—in a world without numbers. Oh yes, they are our boat, our craft, the leaping dolphin, too, or three, or twenty-seven. They are the days of the week, most thoughtful of them! The minutes and the years...